How to increase internal engagement with your digital tools

1. Make their lives easier
2. Get core people involved from the get-go
3. Conduct the right type of onboarding for your organisations
4. Ensure you keep checking in post-launch

Introducing new software or digital tools should improve productivity and increase consistent processes across your organisation. But, it's not a given.

We dive a little deeper into each tip below to give you a plan to actually get people to adopt and use the new tools in their every day workflow.

1. Make their lives easier

Easier said than done right? But no matter how many bells and whistles your tool may have, the main function of it has to be to serve your users and reduce the pain points they may be hitting. So before you sign on the dotted line or even before you start your search take some time to consider these things:

What problem are you solving?

Defining this at the early stage can help inform your onboarding marketing and procedures.

How many people does this benefit?

Is this going to help a lot of people or just a few? If it’s a small group is that going to make a difference to your organisation and their wellbeing?

Is there anything you can combine to make life even easier?

There are loads of tools out there that offer integrations. For example we can integrate with intranets, Digital Asset Management systems (DAM), print suppliers and more. How many different tools are you using and can any of them combine to create a smoother, easier process for your users?

2. Get core people involved from the get-go

A key to increasing internal engagement can be as simple as listening to your users and allowing them to feel involved from the start. It gives you an opportunity to find your digital champion; that one person (or group of people) that say ‘I love this product because of X, Y and Z - you should really use it!’ and we all know that that recommendation is priceless.

If you’ve already got your software system, conduct some user interviews or pop on a survey to see how people are enjoying it. You can then choose some particularly responsive people to dig into a little more and find out what pain points they are experiencing. Can you offer solutions for these going forward to encourage more people to use the tool?

If you have a new software system, who better to test it than the people on the frontline who will be using it. Give your users a chance to be heard before you launch your new system. This could be in the form of user testing, user interviews, surveys - both qualitative and quantitative results will help you to identify trends that you can review and address. Any issues or improvements can then be discussed and smoothed out prior to launch.

3. Conduct the right type of onboarding for your organisation

How you present your internal tool to your team really can determine its success or failure. You want to inspire people to use your tool and get them excited. After all it’s going to solve one of their challenges and make their lives easier right? So when you’re thinking about onboarding think about how you would like to intake the information you need:

Do look at quick videos or demonstrations that really highlight the benefits of the tool and how easy it is to use. As a society our attention span is getting shorter and having something visual can be of real use.

Don’t conduct lengthy meetings on how to use it or present long-form written content. No one has the time to read an essay and we all know you can drift off in those long meetings. Having said that some supporting written content can be helpful, as a secondary help resource.

Do think of innovative ways you can inspire people to use the platform. Is there a more creative incentive you can offer your users to engage? For example, with BrandStencil you could ask people to share with you their favourite piece of artwork they made and they could then enter a draw. Or you could make a template that everybody will want to use, for example a new business card - everybody loves a new business card!

Do offer an additional support service for those who may need extra onboarding help. Perhaps as an extra webinar or demo that people can sign up to, if they just need a little more support.

Do continue to offer onboarding training periodically through the year. As employees come and go we all know that sometimes knowledge goes with them, but with every new employee is a new opportunity to make them a super user!

4. Ensure you keep checking in post-launch

Once your tool is launched and out in the wild it’s tempting to sit back and relax but, as we spoke about in onboarding, people come and go and both new and old users will always find new ways to improve their experience with the tool. Listening to this and offering continuous improvements will be the key to keeping your users engaged with your internal tool.

So once you’ve done the hard work of getting the tool over the line and all your onboarding complete, let it settle in for a few months and then re-engage with your users to see how they are finding it. Much like you did with the initial user testing you could conduct both qualitative and quantitative testing: pop on a survey or conduct some interviews with a few super users and also those that dislike it. Best to get both sides of the coin so you can really understand how it’s being used and what you can do to help solve any troubles your users are having or celebrate the successes.

You can also continue to encourage users to really own what they are doing and get creative with sharing their success. Is there a really great thing they did you can shout about on social media or an internal prize you can give them? Can super users become trainers for others? For something like BrandStencil, for example, we would encourage users to share their artwork with their team, essentially showing off their hard work but also sharing with others what you can do. This inspires them to get creative and engage with the platform also, which is exactly what we want.